Cermak: Lots of bars calls for police

Published 7:48 pm, Monday, October 28, 2013

"Holy cow!'' was my immediate reaction when Schenectady police leaders recently told the City Council that officers had responded to 1,091 calls at seven bars in the last two years.

I thought back to my much younger days when I used to stop at various taverns once each weekend pretty much without fail. My quick math showed that about 50 annual bar stops over a 30-year span meant I had bellied up to a bar about 1,500 times.

Despite all that exposure, I don't ever recall being at a watering hole when police had to be called to keep the peace. My bar days stretched roughly between the 1960s through the 1980s.

During my 30-year comparison period, I never saw a gun or knife in a bar or a melee. A few times a couple of drunks would square off in a push-and-shove match, but the bartender broke up the scrap. Often the battlers would get bounced, but no calling the cops.

I suppose you could have labeled those the good old days. Patrons were satisfied drinking beer or whiskey instead of mixing alcohol with cocaine and other drugs.

Five of the seven bars have had their licenses revoked. Police Chief Brian Kilcullen said the vast majority of trouble stemmed from the same crowd that moved from bar to bar.

"Since the crackdown, we have been pretty much free of bar problems," Kilcullen said last weekend. "We don't know where the problem patrons relocated."

My guess is they took their show on the road.

Street people's pitches

Over time, I've been approached by weird characters in downtown Schenectady. This statement is not meant to be an indictment of Schenectady, because all urban business districts have their share of unusual street people.

Several years ago in front of City Hall, a young panhandler asked for money. When questioned about the need for the dough, he had a doozy of a response. "I need funds for my marijuana research project,'' he said with a straight face.

There are other wacky tales. Just two weekends ago, a Delmar man and family members were having lunch downtown at Clinton's Ditch before attending a reception at the nearby Van Dyke.

The guy from Delmar steps outside the restaurant to use his cellphone for a business call. He's approached by a street character saying he is starting a porno business. He said he wanted to film some porno movies.

"And you look like a good man to be in a movie with a couple of babes" was the sidewalk character's pitch, which was rejected.

Just when I thought I'd heard all the sidewalk peddler schemes, up pops this pretty wild proposal.

Low pre-election turnout

Political leaders will tell you it's tough to generate voter interest in off-year elections when tickets are not headed by presidential, gubernatorial or mayoral races.

Lacking any high-profile campaigns, the top billing at a political forum last week featured six candidates for three Schenectady City Council seats.

The audience at Proctors totaled only 100 or so, which is puny considering that many in the audience were relatives and friends of the candidates or political party workers.

Perhaps the most debated issue was the high cost of police overtime, a long-standing sticky wicket. Coincidentally, two uniformed officers were in the audience. A couple citizens called the Times Union complaining that cops at a political forum was a waste of police resources.

A check with police brass revealed Ed Ritz, PBA president, and P.J. Mullen, the union's first VP, attended the event on their lunch hour.